Spain’s Socialist Utopia Mugged by Reality

Spain’s Socialist Utopia Mugged by Reality

A massive wave of social unrest in cities across Spain, dubbed the Spanish Revolution, reflects the failure of the social welfare state model to provide Spanish youth with a future, much less a present.


Throngs of Spanish youth have gathered in more than 150 cities across Spain to protest skyrocketing unemployment, cutbacks to social welfare benefits, and rampant corruption among Spain’s political elite. The massive but mostly peaceful protests (photo galleries here, here, here and here) by disaffected youth represent the first significant manifestations of social unrest since a decades-long housing bubble burst in late 2007 and plunged the Spanish economy into a deep and prolonged recession.

The self-styled May 15th Movement took to the streets of Spanish cities on Sunday, May 15, to demand “real democracy now” and a new economic policy ahead of municipal and regional elections on May 22. United by anger over a youth jobless rate that is hovering at around 45 percent — and the inability of a largely inept political class to do anything about it — the May 15th Movement is a conglomeration of several smaller protest groups, including Democracia Real Ya! (Real Democracy Now!) and Toma La Plaza (Take the Square).

The Spanish protesters have been inspired by the pro-democracy movements in the Arab world, and are using social media networks to coordinate the demonstrations. (One of Twitter’s most popular conversation topics in recent days has been the hashtag #15m, or May 15, which marks the start of the #SpanishRevolution.)

so as Europeans wake up from Socialism, Progressives try drive America further to over to Socialism ....


Enough communism did not work, Socialism does not work .... sooner of later YOU run out of other peoples money ...


ASK Greece how that worked out ......... of course THAT WAS Europe, I guess Progressive THINK American Socialism will do better .....

Spain’s ailing economy too is a symptom of much broader problem, including the inability of the social welfare economic model to create jobs, as well as a highly paternalistic labor market that benefits an older generation seeking to preserve the status quo. Although Spain’s economic crisis has affected workers in all age groups, youth unemployment is more than double the overall jobless rate of 21.2 percent, the highest in the industrialized world. Around half of Spain’s youth are unemployed and the other half that is working often does so under highly exploitative employment conditions.

Spain’s status quo is preserved by a dysfunctional economic, political, and judicial system as well as an unwritten social contract whereby many college graduates work in poorly paid apprenticeships (often earning the minimum wage of €641 or $900 a month), sometimes for ten years or more, leaving them no other option than to live at home with their parents, sometimes until their mid-thirties. (By way of comparison, 63 percent of all Spanish workers earn less than €1100 per month, creating the neologism mileurista, a one thousand euro earner.)